


A Peter Pettigrew Perspective

by im_gera_okay



Series: HP Character Studies | F JKR [2]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, I was just fascinated by this idea, Peter Pettigrew Perspective, Villain PoV, but not really, he was a part of the group, i would love to read it, if anyone actually writes a redemption arc for peter, please let me know, redemption arc, why would he betray them?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/im_gera_okay/pseuds/im_gera_okay
Summary: What it says on the tin, I was really intrigued by the idea, so...F JK ROWLINGTRANS LIVES MATTER
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: HP Character Studies | F JKR [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2003881
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	A Peter Pettigrew Perspective

Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor: he was chivalrous and brave. 

In his third year, Sirius Black joked that the Sorting Hat must have been hit with a Confundus Charm on September 1st, 1971. 

“I was destined for Slytherin, and Petey’s quite obviously a Hufflepuff… Remy’s a raven!”

“Ravenclaws are eagles, Siri.”

“Ok, well that’s stupid.”

Peter had laughed, stung by the joke and yet grateful that Sirius had missed the mark.

Peter Pettigrew had one of the longest Sortings in Hogwarts history, a Hat Stall that lasted fourteen minutes.

But it was not a split between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, as some might assume, but rather between Gryffindor and Slytherin.

Even eleven-year-old boys could detect that tense tone of politics, and Peter Pettigrew knew that this was not a good thing. 

The hat’s indecision was the only secret he kept from his three best friends, at least for the next seven years.

 _You’re cunning,_ the Hat had said. _You have great potential… and you’re self-serving. You do what’s best for you. Yes, you could fit into Slytherin._

Peter Pettigrew was a half-blood, though, and he remembered the way the older boys in green had circled around a younger kid on the Hogwarts Express.

“Filthy half-breed,” the hulking boy– Rowle?– had snarled. “You’re a bastard child, a disgrace to the Macnairs.”

“And your mother was a no-good Muggle-loving bitch,” smirked the boy with long platinum hair. “Well, you may be a stain on the Macnair name, but neither you nor your traitorous mother could ever claim Heirship. And thank Merlin!”

So maybe Peter Pettigrew was self-serving, but it didn’t really seem as though Slytherin would be the best place for him. And besides, he remembered the two boys on the train– James Potter and Sirius Black.

“I’ll be a Gryffindor for sure!” Potter had cried, leaping to his feet.

Black rolled his eyes: “Yes, and for the fifth time, I’ll be in slimy Slytherin.”

Potter had turned to Black, narrowing his eyes. “You know, Black, I don’t really think you will be.”

And sure enough– Sirius Black had gone into Gryffindor, and the Great Hall had sat in stunned silence.

Black was in Gryffindor, and Potter obviously would be too, and they were both quite funny.

So yes, maybe Peter was quite self-serving, but the Hat had said he could go to Gryffindor.

Except: _Well see, your thinking there seems very Slytherin to me, Mr. Pettigrew. You want to go to Gryffindor, but for very Slytherin reasons._

And so they had argued over it, and fourteen minutes later the Hat had acquiesced.

_Fine! Have it your way. But remember my words, Mr. Pettigrew– you could have done well with the snakes._

Well, a year and a half later, Remus Lupin had stared down Sirius Black with flashing amber eyes. 

“Yeah,” he’d said, “I am a werewolf.”

And Peter had been very afraid. But– but James Potter and Sirius Black only seemed excited. Oddly subdued, perhaps, but their eyes glinted with thrill, and they really hadn’t seemed very scared. 

And Peter thought back to the Sorting Hat’s words: _You could have done well with the snakes._

It would be the self-serving thing to owl his mother, or to tell Professor McGonagall, but that was what a Slytherin would do. Peter could be brave, the Sorting Hat had admitted it. He could be. 

So Peter had stared down at his fingers, clenched them into fists, and looked straight up at Remus Lupin. 

“I don’t care,” Peter Pettigrew said. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Peter Pettigrew could be brave, he could be chivalrous, he could be a Marauder.

In third year, Severus Snape had insulted Remus’ shabby clothes. Peter Pettigrew stood and said, “I challenge you to a duel!”

James Potter and Sirius Black had turned to him with dropped jaws, and Remus had pulled at his sleeve: “Peter, I don’t need you to defend my honor!”

“This Saturday, by the Forbidden Forest!” He’d insisted, shaking off Remus’ hand. “Sirius Black will be my second.”

“How quaint,” Snape had sneered. “My second will be Evan Rosier.”

And Sirius had stood at his shoulder. “Run along, Snivellus, and we’ll see you this weekend.”

“You’ve lost your mind!” Remus had hissed, but James’ eyes had glimmered with pride and Sirius slung an arm around his shoulder giddily.

On Saturday, Snape flung a hex that Peter had never heard of before, one that shone with green light and left deep gouges in the mud where he’d stood only seconds before.

“Peter!” Sirius had cried from the sidelines, and Peter Pettigrew tossed his wand to the side and punched Severus Snape in the face.

He rode that high for the next month, and Gryffindor House had hailed him as a hero that night in the common room, all tipsy on Butterbeer and screaming along to Freddie Mercury.

“That was stupid,” Remus Lupin had declared, “but it was also really Gryffindor of you.”

In fourth year, he’d had a date with Emmeline Vance, and he stood between her and one Dorian Avery in the streets of Hogsmeade.

He’d deflected the Stinging Hex shot off by Avery, he’d retaliated with a Severing Charm. The cut on Avery’s forearm had dripped bright red into the snow, and he’d ran off back to the castle. Emmeline Vance had snogged him behind the Three Broomsticks, and– that was chivalrous, wasn’t it?

On the train station after fifth-year, after the Yule when Sirius had finally ran away, Peter had stood firmly beside Remus Lupin and James Potter. He’d faced down the furious Walburga Black, who was backed by a seething Lucius Malfoy and a manic Bellatrix Lestrange.

“He’s no son of mine!” Walburga Black had spit, and Peter had opened his mouth:

“Then it’s really none of your business where he spends the summer,” and Remus and James had nodded at his shoulders. 

Later that summer, at the Potter Mansion, Sirius had looked at the three of them and smiled. 

“I can’t believe you stood up to the Warden Walburga. That was actually– I mean it was idiotic, but it was brave. So thanks.”

And he took those words to heart. 

When Peter Pettigrew was twenty-one, his sister Philomena was killed by Death Eaters.

His mother was in St. Mungo’s with Dragon Pox, and his dad was a Muggle who didn’t understand.

Peter stood in the Potter Cottage in Godric’s Hollow, he’d watched Sirius cradle two-week old Harry Potter up in his arms and Remus make a cup of tea for a wild-eyed James. He was very suddenly struck with the feeling of being supremely out of place, and when Lily Potter came up behind him, he jumped nearly a foot in the air.

“Are you alright, Wormy?” She asked with kind green eyes, the same eyes in the face of baby Harry. 

“I’m fine,” he’d said, and it hadn’t been true– that morning, he’d been contacted by the Death Eaters, and they’d asked him to be their spy.

Peter Pettigrew was brave– he’d studied for three years to become a rat Animagus, and he’d sat through nearly seventy full moons with his werewolf friend.

He’d duelled Death Eaters in the streets, he’d stood by the Black family black sheep, and he’d held baby Harry in his arms whilst knowing he was going to get him killed. 

Peter Pettigrew was brave, and he loved baby Harry Potter, but he could have done well in Slytherin.

“We killed your sister,” the Death Eaters said, “and we will kill you too.”

His family was the Marauders, his family was his mother who was sick with Dragon Pox, and his family was his nephew Harry Potter.

He bounced Harry on his lap and put his tiny rat paws in his poofy hair. He tickled Harry’s pudgy stomach and babysat him on summer nights. 

He drank whiskey with Sirius Black, and flicked him on the nose when he said he felt Remus was keeping something from him. 

“You’re in a relationship,” he’d said drily. “He has to keep some things for himself. And please, a spy for You-Know-Who? Remus hates Fenrir Greyback more than anything else in this world.”

Peter Pettigrew knew that Remus Lupin was not a spy. He knew this because he’d been to the Death Eater meetings, had known the names and faces of the group.

Shamefully, quietly, he’d sneak away to meet with them. “We will kill you,” they said, and he knew that they would.

Peter Pettigrew played chess with Remus Lupin, and helped him find books about lycanthropy written by actual werewolves. For months, they had looked through the Potter Library.

“There were whole communities of werewolves in some parts of Asia,” Peter said firmly. “They had a culture, and they wrote it down. We’ll find some record of it. James swears he’s heard about an independent werewolf community in Karnataka.” 

“But the Potters were from Tamil Nadu!” 

“And you think they never interacted with other states?”

Peter Pettigrew sat with Lily Potter when all of her letters to Petunia Dursley came back unanswered.

“At least she’s safe,” he’d offered, and Lily had turned to him with sad eyes.

“I bet you miss your sister, too,” Lily said.

Peter thought of Philomena’s dead eyes as she lay on the floor of her flat in Muggle London. The Muggle police didn’t know how she died: the Killing Curse left no marks.

“We killed your sister,” Evan Rosier had said, sneering. “We will kill you too.”

“Yeah,” Peter Pettigrew said to Lily Potter. “I miss her.”

In the spring of 1994, Peter Pettigrew stood in the Shrieking Shack– the safehouse of his youth– with two of his once best friends and the son of the third.

“If he’s been living in Harry’s dormitory for three years,” one Hermione Granger asked, “why hasn’t he ever hurt him before?”

“People thought Voldemort was dead,” Remus Lupin says sharply. “It didn’t serve Peter to hurt Harry.”

Hysterically, Peter Pettigrew thought that Remus had hit the nail on the head: He did things to serve himself. Wasn’t that what the Sorting Hat had said nearly twenty-three years ago? 

And then, soberingly, he thought: I was his uncle once. 

I killed James and Lily, he thought, and I don’t want to hurt their son. 

But then he escaped as a rat for the second time in his life, and he found You-Know-You again.

A year later, Peter Pettigrew pulled a dagger down the length of Harry Potter’s forearm to reawaken the Dark Lord. He watched as his once-nephew was tortured, and he heard Harry Potter’s screams. 

He owed a Life Debt to Harry Potter from the spring of 1994, and he was grateful for it. Harry Potter had spared his life in James Potter’s name, but Peter Pettigrew knew that James would not have hesitated. Peter had been one of James’ best friends for ten years, and one of Lily’s for six. James would not have hesitated, he knew, and Lily would not have flinched. 

This kindness was solely Harry’s, and Harry’s alone, and it made Peter want to cry for all that he’d destroyed.

Use it, Peter Pettigrew thought of his Life Debt. Make me help you.

When James and Lily’s son was seventeen, and Peter Pettigrew was more rat than man, Harry Potter invoked his Life Debt, and Peter paused.

He choked himself to death while looking at a man like James with Lily’s eyes, and he hoped the boy was more of a Gryffindor than he had ever been.

The Sorting Hat had told him so twenty-seven years ago: Peter would do what it took to save himself.

Peter had been the weak-link, the one on the edge of the abyss. Harry Potter was not weak, and nor had James and Lily been.

Peter Pettigrew killed himself, and he was almost glad of it. 

Kill him, he thought, and don’t give in.


End file.
